Reviewer : Tim Byrne
Story Title : A Hot Night in Budapest
Writer : Bill Willingham
Penciller : Ron Wagner
Inker : Dexter Vines
Letterer : Pat Brosseau
Colorist : Chris Chuckry
Editor : Joey Cavalieri
Publisher : DC Comics
This ‘magical’ story continues, with a couple of knock-down, drawn-out fights between various magical entities.
I’m really just being carried along for the ride with some of these mini-series. As a comparatively recent passenger on the DC Comics bandwagon, these series with their clearly passionate nods to long-time readers and followers of obscure characters is slightly lost on me.
Having said that, one can’t help but smile when one of the main characters in such a world-sweeping, epic mini-series is a wise-talking chimp who looks like a refugee from a Humphrey Bogart movie. Characters like Chimp help to keep a series like this grounded, especially on those occasions when all these magical characters make it seem like the whole story will go floating away on the wings of a magical spell.
Another positive is the involvement of Captain Marvel. As cheesy sometimes as Superman, the voice-over, along with the depiction of Marvel remind us of what a hero he actually is, particularly in a situation where he is clearly overmatched.
Admittedly, the solution of the problem in which Marvel finds himself is hardly an earth-shattering one, but it serves its story-line purpose without feeling like too much of a cop-out.
I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t run into a great deal of penciller Wagner’s previous work, but he gets the job done here, giving a suitably cartoony atmosphere to what is pretty clearly a story that could only be done in comic books.
It is fairly clear that all four of these mini-series are beginning to shape as world-changing (heck, or even universe-changing) events, and I want to be there for the ride.
